


the happy AU

by kinnoth



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Romantic Friendship, Suicide Attempt, mostly meta actually, weird not really prose/not really meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5899399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinnoth/pseuds/kinnoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which nobody has to die or lose their humanity or their mind or lock themselves for eternity into a dream waiting alone to be freed</p>
            </blockquote>





	the happy AU

**Author's Note:**

> [relevant reading](http://kinnoth.tumblr.com/tagged/bloodborne-meta)

In another world, the blood doesn’t work.

The money and the goodwill dry up. There was never much to begin with, but what tenuous confidence they’d established amongst the surrounding villages falls to pieces as people wake up blind again, deaf again, lame in the months after their course of healing blood.

“Charlatans,” come the whispers in waves crashing against the foundations of their labour. “Occultists.”

In twos and threes, the others leave. Some of them go back to Byrgenwerth; others disperse into the city. Laurence goes nowhere, works tirelessly, an inplacable wind at his back. Gehrman stays with him. The laboratory echoes with the sounds of Laurence’s study, his notations, the hiss of fallen leaves that filter endlessly through the windows, no matter how many times Gehrman sweeps them out. He keeps the lamps lit, the hearth burning, buries the bodies that will be buried, burns the ones that won't. He makes Laurence eat, makes him sleep, sleeps next to him, talks to him when he talks, talks at him when he won’t. Comes back from a supply run one day and finds him with a knife against his wrist.

He could have never, in any life, in any circumstance imagined it, striking Laurence out of anger, but he does. Laurence’s head hangs at the angle it’s blown, his hair in his eyes, his glasses askew, as Gehrman bellows at him, “How could you think, how could you ever–” while he takes the surgical tools from him, hurls them across the empty warehouse floor, banging into things and upturning the room until he rounds back to him, pulls Laurence into his body and holds him in fear and anger and fear until Laurence moves again.

“I can’t go back.” His voice is a dry hiss of sound, like red and orange leaves, like the movement of sand in a glass. His fingers drift over the backs of Gehrman’s shoulders in form without pattern, but so lightly that Gehrman realises at last which of them is trembling. “I won’t do it, Gehrman, I won’t face him again and have him look at me knowing I was wrong, Gehrman, I can’t–-”

“So we won’t go back,“ Gehrman tells him firmly. He shakes his head against Laurence’s shoulder. "We don’t have to. We don’t have to go anywhere, if you don’t want to, nothing you don’t want to do, so you don’t have to, all right? Nothing you don’t want to do. Do you understand?”

They go together into the city, and they tell no one where they’re going. The equipment they took from Byrgenwerth sells, and Gehrman has some money of his own, and he’s ready to work, willing to work, doesn’t care what work he does as long as it’s enough to get them by. The flat is one room, a kitchen, and a bath. It smells of the backdrift from the canal and sunlight never quite reaches their window. Gehrman tries to get Laurence to take the room, knows how he prizes his privacy, but he insists. Gehrman keeps the door shut at night, but unlocked. He wakes sometimes, listening and trying not to hear.

Laurence struggles; he’s an academic with no academy, and no name to fall back on, no name he'll even speak. Gehrman can hardly bear to leave him in the mornings when he sits hunched on his elbows at the table, pouring over newspaper print, having turned so quiet and pale and thin beneath his clothes that Gehrman’s afraid one day he’ll find light shining through him.

It’s lowly work, but Laurence takes up tutoring. They drag the beds together into one room so Laurence will have a place to work. His pupils are mostly children of the well-to-do needing help with their grammar and equations: beneath him, and it itches Gehrman that he’s reduced to such resorts, but Laurence says nothing about it, counts his coins in one hand, and apologises quietly about the rent. Gehrman doesn’t want his money, but he takes it anyway. Laurence won’t look at him. He faces the wall when he sleeps.

Things do improve. Gehrman knows that Laurence hates the work, hates the servile simpering, but it’s only a matter of time before, like everything Laurence does and puts his mind to, he finds himself terrifyingly effective. His clientèle bring in more pupils, and he’s able to set his own terms. Starts paying Gehrman back for the money he still doesn’t want from him. Starts bringing in enough that he can get his own place if he wants.

They have one brief, stilted discussion about the possibility. Gehrman holds himself still and is very careful not to express any opinions about it one way or another as Laurence presents to him reasons in favour and those against until, in the middle of it, Laurence stops and rather uncharacteristically gently concludes, “I would miss you,” and they speak no more of it.

The years pass and the seasons turn. They move to a better neighbourhood, a bigger flat with a front room specifically so Laurence has a place to teach. Gehrman is so pleased for him; he’s smiling again, and he moves with some purpose. And in the evenings, when both of them are finished with their day, they talk.

Summer, and there’s an opening at a local boys school for a linguistics teacher. One of Laurence’s clients offers to put in a good word for him. Laurence writes with his credentials, but of course the sceptics of the school board demand: Who is this man and where did he come from? Why should we consider him over these other men from good backgrounds, established families?

(And Byrgenwerth? That hive of witchcraft?)

Gehrman is furious, but Laurence is nothing but assurances. It’ll be all right, they’re fine where they are. Kisses the side of his mouth, _Don’t put yourself out of sorts for my sake, dearheart, I’ll be fine._

Gehrman doesn’t like this placid Laurence, doesn’t like this man who flinches and scrapes and won’t meet his gaze. Where is his friend who split a school with the force of his convictions? Where is his friend who looked the Provost in the eye and called him a fool? Where is his Laurence, who moved for nothing and no one beneath heaven?

A week or so goes by and then a knock on the door. Gehrman is out, working. Laurence answers.

It’s a board member from the school. Old man, ovine whiskers. He’s looking for a Laurence, no surname given. He’d like to have a talk.

Laurence sits him down at their battered table and ignores the eyes the old man casts around the room. He offers him tea and is unsurprised when he’s refused. The old man tells him, severely, that they reviewed his credentials. Yes he’s more than competent in multiple fields of study; yes he’s had a good track record with his own small classroom; yes they’re still concerned with his reputation of lack thereof, but there’s an assistant position on a trial basis, he can come by tomorrow to review the paperwork; _don’t get uppity with us, son._

Laurence graciously accepts, walks him out. At the door: “By the by, what changed your mind?”

Coughing, harrumphing: “Provost Willem wrote us. Said something about you being the most brilliant student, researcher, and scholar he’s ever had in his college. Said we were fools not to take you on. Good day, sir.”

Willem writes to the school, and so Laurence writes to Willem, four years after leaving: “I don’t expect your forgiveness, but I want to thank you for the kindness you’ve done. I suppose I shall always, in some capacity, owe what I am to Byrgenwerth.”

Willem writes back, mostly irascible, mostly scolding, ends with, “Even if you’ve failed to learn any sense in these years intervening, you’ll do well to learn of loyalty. Take lessons from your friend, Gehrman, who plead your case on your behalf,“ and Laurence, who would not be humbled even by the only man to whom he has ever owed debt, finds himself suddenly calm and full of grace.

He kisses Gehrman when Gehrman comes back that evening, chastely but full on the mouth. Gehrman asks after him, confused, but remains in his embrace.

Laurence says with a full heart, “You’ve shown me such devotion, I cannot imagine what I ever have done to earn it.”

Gehrman folds him up in his arms and, after a moment, replies, “But you don’t have to earn anything from me, Laurence, you’re already my friend.”

That night, Laurence takes him to bed and kisses him again, on his cheek, his eyes, the corners of his mouth. Gehrman strokes his hair until he falls asleep. They sleep next to each other through the night and morning finds Gehrman first, warm and still pressed against Laurence’s side. He kisses him because he can, and when Laurence turns to meet him, it feels only natural, like a progression of waves. 

When Laurence’s hand lays out flat over the back of his neck and pulls, it’s only right that Gehrman goes to him, as he always goes to him. His body is soft where Gehrman covers it with his own. His cries of delight are of the same voice as his laugh. There is nothing strange to loving Laurence. He’s loved him for ten years; it is his most natural state of being. It is the very best thing he knows how to do.

It takes Laurence eight months to acquire a permanent position, another three for him to bring up one of his old school friends when talk comes of finding a new history teacher in place of old Corbin.

He’s head teacher by the end of the decade, headmaster in fifteen. His friend, now master in botany, takes over as head of house for the southern dorm; his boys are rowdy but quick with discipline.

Headmasters’ quarters are traditionally in the heart of campus but Laurence insists on taking the old house on the edge of the practice fields. It’s draughty and overgrown but it sits on a small hill surrounded by trees. In the winter the windows are bright through the evening and the chimney smokes in the cold. In the spring there are flowers, silver white that smell of deep forests and still water. 

“Lumenflowers, they grow on moonlight,” the headmaster clarifies when he’s asked. “We grew them at Byrgenwerth, back in the day. They do remind me of home.”


End file.
